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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone's historical existence.
Literary proof is, but also doesn't exist for Jesus Christ.
There's a few mentions of just a "Jesus" but its not like no one else was named Jesus, and those don't really make any mention of him being remarkable in any way.
There's just no evidence
AFAIK most historians/scholars agree that Jesus was a real person (even if a lot of the Bible's claims about what he did are not true). But I'm not a historian. What are you basing your opinion on?
Exactly this. The person did exist. There's proof of that. It wasn't the son of god and didn't perform miracles, but he was real nonetheless.
Important notion that Jesus never claimed to be the son of god and that entire line of thinking was established some four hundred years after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
So we have to differentiate between what is the actual Gospel and life of Jesus and what the more creative parts of the churches invented on top of it over time.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. John 8:58
Which is from one of the original 4 gospels. Apparently there's evidence of it being written as early as 70AD. There's a couple other quotes I found in a link some other person linked in this thread but this one seems most direct.
There exists documented proof in many bits of literature from around 200 BCE to around 100 CE of numerous different figures in what is called 'Jewish Apocalypticism', basically a small in number but persistent phenomenon of Jews in and around what was for most of that time the Roman province of Palestine, preaching that the end would come, that God or a Messiah would return or arise and basically liberate the region and install a Godly Kingdom, usually after or as part of other fantastical events.
Jesus was one of many of these Jewish Apocalypticists. Much like the rest of the movement's key figures, they were wrong, and their lives were greatly exaggerated in either their writings or writings about them or inspired by them.
This seems to be the (extremely condensed) opinion of most Biblical Scholars.
There are a very small number of modern Biblical Scholars that are 'Mythicists' of some kind, who believe that Jesus was completely fictional and wholly invented by certain people or groups.
This is an unpopular view amongst scholars and historians of that time and region, as most believe it more plausible that Jesus was just another example of a radical Jewish Apocalyptic preacher, which again, was fairly common for roughly 300 years in that region.
Its like how if you go to a big city theres always that one guy with a megaphone preaching imminent doom. 99% of people think this is silly and ignore them, but tons of people know that people like them exist and do have small followings.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z8j3HvmgpYc
Satans Guide to the Bible for more apocalyptic felt Jesus.
I've heard theories that key people probably had hallucinations of Jesus a few days after he was killed, which was the big thing that helped launch him from yet-another-apocalyptic-preacher to (eventually) God himself. I don't know how well these are accepted, though.
This stems from the fact that, so far, the earliest dated written fragments we have from what is now the New Testament are some of the writings of Paul.
Paul was not one of the ~~Apostles~~ EDIT: Disciples, and it seems possible that, after persecuting earlier, existing Christians, he could have basically had a stress induced psychotic break and hallucinated the vision of Jesus that he had, then converted.
Thing is though, Christians would have to ... you know exist and already be a real thing first, for that to make sense.
It does explain why Paul does not mention some very key elements of the narrative of the Gospels: He just had not actually read about or heard of those parts yet.
This creates some theological problems down the line, and some of those problems were 'remedied' by what a good deal of scholars and historians believe to be forgeries... chapters of the Bible that modern Christians attribute to Paul, but do not seem to actually have been written by Paul.
It is also possible to some of the empty tomb accounts in some of the Gospels as similar kinds of trauma induced hallucinations.
Mark famously originally just ends with an empty tomb, and nobody said anything about this because they were scared... and then the last bit of verses giving Mark a more satisfying ending have been shown to be added ... decades later.
The explanation I heard was that it was likely Mary and Peter hallucinated Jesus only a few days after he died. That's a very common timeframe for when people hallucinate seeing dead loved ones, and the early descriptions in Bible match the flavor of dead loved-one hallucinations people typically have, with the figure assuring the person everything will be all right and whatnot. Other descriptions (like Jesus appearing to all twelve disciples or crowds of people) seem to have been written later more as persuasive arguments, with doubting Tomas acting as the stand-in for the skeptical listener. This is all from "How Jesus Became God" and I have no idea how mainstream or fringe the author's views are.
I agree with you that Jesus wasn't God, who doesn't exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there's no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.
The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It's also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says 'A guy rode a dolphin once' we dismiss that. But we don't say 'The people in the Histories didn't exist, except those for whom there's physical evidence, which is about three of them, not including the author'. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.
If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to make up a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, 'That guy didn't exist'. If they had anyway decided to make up a guy, they'd have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn't. This suggests they didn't invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.
A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you're suggesting. But there aren't. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can't think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.